Su-Ki-Da 好きだ、

Su-ki-da, directed by Hiroshi Ishikawa, is a slow-paced arthouse romance that I watched with Vivienne and Ayumi on the night of Justin's birthday party, we were reduced to groaning in agony as the film became too slow and, as said by Variety's review, selfishly inert.

Despite being a filmmaker myself, and yes, facing numerous snide accusations of being 'artsy fartsy', I still think of myself to be rather uncultured, I didn't 'get' Godard's 'My Life To Live' (I loved Alphaville though), and I wasn't blown (sorry) away by Antonioni's 'Blow-Up' (... despite the nudity) and his latest short film in Eros (despite even more nudity). I also didn't 'get' many Malaysian indie works that are lauded by film fests around the world. Maybe I am... slow. (but not THAT slow, since I can still enjoy Wong Kar Wai films, haha)

So, for me, sitting through Su-Ki-Da was quite tough (especially during a party!!). Especially with a film filled with jump cuts, cryptic silences, shots of various cloud formations and long takes bereft of movement.



Story's about a pair of 17-year-olds, Yosuke (Eita), who is constantly playing a plaintive, unfinished tune on his guitar, while Yu (Miyazaki Aoi) has the hots for him, but does nothing but hangs around with him, and occasionally confides in older sis (Oyamada Sayuri), who is forever stuck in the kitchen... cooking.

So, the entire first half of the film is like this.

- Yosuke sits at the grassy fields, playing that tune.
- Yu sits there and watch.
- Shots of clouds.
- Shots of scenery.
- Yu goes home and speaks to older sis.
- Shots of clouds.
- Shots of scenery.
- The next day... the cycle repeats.

It's entirely introspective, a mood piece, atmospheric, you are supposed to FEEL the poetry of nothingness, its bland listlessness should be interpreted as well-depicted realism. It is like reading a Haruki Murakami book, but without the annoying surrealism.

Anyway, nothing occurred between the two (BOOOOO!). Seventeen years later, the duo met again, Hidetoshi Nishijima plays the older Yosuke and Hiromi Nagasaku plays the older Yu. Unfortunately for us, things remain just as excruciatingly slow, with a random tragedy that struck in the end.





There is a scene in the middle of the film where there's a really long take of Miyazaki Aoi's Yu shortly after she confessed her love for Yosuke. Yosuke remained offscreen, we see a range of emotions displayed by her throughout the scene, from initial shyness, to barely concealed joy and excitement, to heartbreaking disappointment. Marvellous acting.

The scene would be replicated later by her older counter part Hiromi Nagasaku.

As much as I seem to be complaining about this film. There are moments that linger.


Su-ki-da trailer

BEERFEST

A film from Broken Lizard, the comedy group behind films like Super Troopers (saw it once quite a while ago on television, can't remember it much) and Club Dread ( didn't see it), the five members of Broken Lizard are Jay Chandrasekhar (usually the director), Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske. They write and star in their films.

I'm lazy to explain the plot, so I'll just copy and paste it from the Beerfest Wikipedia entry:

"The plot begins with two American brothers, Jan (Paul Soter) and Todd (Erik Stolhanske) Wolfhouse, who are mourning the death of their immigrant grandfather Johann Von Wolfhausen (an uncredited Donald Sutherland), founder of the Schitzengiggle German beer hall in the United States. They learn from their great-grandmother (Cloris Leachman) that they have an opportunity to travel to Germany to deliver their grandfather's ashes. Jan and Todd gladly take this opportunity when they learn that Oktoberfest will be occurring at this very same time in Munich, Bavaria.

While in Germany, Jan and Todd find "Beerfest", an underground drinking game tournament run by Baron Wolfgang Von Wolfhausen (Jürgen Prochnow). As the brothers arrive, they witness the German national team defeating the Irish national team and discover that the German Von Wolfhausen competitors are relatives of the American Wolfhouse family. The Germans explain that Jan and Todd's grandfather Johann had stolen a beer recipe decades ago and demand the recipe back from the unknowing brothers. Jan and Todd engage in a drinking contest with the Germans but are soundly defeated. The brothers travel back home and swear to get revenge on the Germans...

Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go

After finishing Michael Moorcock's The Dancers At The End Of Time (which was a rather sprawling read), I sifted for the number of books which I've bought but haven't read. I needed an easier read, something smaller in scope and scale, can be finished in a shorter time as I was in the midst of preparing for my film shoot. And voila, I picked Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which I actually bought in '3 for 2' deal earlier this year, along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love In The Time of Cholera (OMFG! GREAT BOOK!! MOST ROMANTIC BOOK I'VE EVER READ!) and Ian McEwan's Saturday (currently reading, second chapter, seems promising).

The last Ishiguro book I read was When We Were Orphans, six years ago. Fresh out of high school, I was untrained for something as subtle as that, and even though I remembered being slightly moved by its ending, and raving about it to my indifferent cousin, I cannot remember a single thing about it now. Er, it has to do with a private eye searching for his missing mom, right?

Retro-looking Trains, Ballerinas and Fairy Rabbits. More Production Photos From Girl Disconnected.

My skin is currently peeling after the major sunburns I suffered during last Friday's grueling shoot.

Thankfully, the subsequent shoots for the production were much easier as we were in a more controlled environment. One in the university's TV studio, and one in the Bassendean Railway Museum. The scene with Justin and Grace (the rabbit) was shot during Mooncake Festival two days ago, while the train scene was shot early yesterday.

So here you are, some more production photos from my upcoming short film.

The Mars Volta

When I was in my late teens, casting around for new music to listen to (this was the golden age of Napster, when you could find anything, and people's tastes were expanding), I started getting into 70's progressive rock. Now, prog has a bad reputation - it's considered uncool and unlistenable by the mainstream media, appreciable only ironically. But my average mix tape contains Norwegian black metal, Japanese girl-pop, Chinese rap, and underground U.S. noise bands, so I could give a fuck less what the mainstream media thinks. The prog bands looked serious, like they cared enough to give their music unconventional themes, arrangements, time signatures, and song titles. They wrote multi-part suites, invented the concept album (as a distinct entity, not a vague muddle like Sgt. Pepper), brought in orchestras (ELO), dabbled in jazz, maxed out the solos. They had outside influences, like film and literature and fantasy and technology. In short, they were trying to keep it new.

The nihilistic, hardcore DOG BITE DOG 狗咬狗

Dog Bite Dog (狗咬狗) starring Edison Chen (his first role since last year's Initial D) and Sam Lee (a once-promising actor demoted to appearing in numerous B-grade crap films in recent years) is hardcore. Heck, I can't even think of another word to describe it.

Talladega Nights: Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is funny like hell. It pokes fun at NASCAR racing, and your generic 'rise and fall and rise of hero' in sports film, most plot cliches were included here: the hero's disastrous accident that traumatized him mentally and emotionally, the hero's loved ones talking to him while he lies comatose in the hospital, the hero's best friend who turned against him, the hero who turned from cocky to humble throughout the course of the film, the supportive love interest, the smart mentor with all kinds of unorthodox training methods.

Yeap, all these were there, and hilarious. Gotta love those overacting and crazy melodrama. And as funny as Will Ferrell was as Ricky Bobby, he seemed more like a straight guy compared to the supporting cast like John C. Reilly's Cal Naughton Jr, Gary Cole as Ricky Bobby's estranged dad. But the entire film is definitely stolen by Sasha Baron Cohen (whose Ali G film I've never seen, unfortunately) as the evil gay French driver, Jean Girrard, who plays lite jazz on the jukebox, and reads L'Stranger (The Outsider) by Albert Camus WHILE RACING, oh, and speaks with an over-the-top French accent. (I don't think I can ever look at an Albert Camus book again without thinking of this film.)

It's hard for me to describe about him much, you just have to see the film yourself to know how damned good Sasha Baron Cohen was. For more memorable quotes of the film, check them out here. I'm definitely looking forward to Borat.

"Hakuna Matata, bitches!" - Jean Girrard

Best line ever.


Talladega Nights trailer

THE LAKE HOUSE (Hollywood remake of the Korean film IL MARE)

A film that reunited Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock since 1995's awesome SPEED (a film that made me spend most of my childhood and high school years sporting a crew cut just because I wanted to be like Keanu, and then decided to allow my hair to grow longer after the Matrix came out, so I can STILL look like Keanu), and a remake of an okay Korean flick, Il Mare.

A New Wiler. And Photos Of The Most Grueling Shoot Ever.

Chau, the original actor playing Wiler has to drop out of the project as he has to leave for UK on the 2nd of October.

Sifow (please accept my marriage proposal, if you're reading this)

I have a confession to make. I'm in love.

MONSTER HOUSE made me regain some hope in 3D animated films

I have no idea how I grew to dislike 3D animated films more and more in the past two years, to the point where I would become entirely indifferent to the majority of the 3D animated releases in the cinemas regardless of their box-office performance or critical reception. Pixar films remain a must-watch event for me, yet I would view anything else with scepticism.

NACHO LIBRE by NAPOLEON DYNAMITE director Jared Hess

I watched Napoleon Dynamite earlier late last year on DVD and enjoyed it, but it didn't exactly blow me away. I guess I didn't really 'get' the film. (Justin said that being an American would've maximized my enjoyment of the film, I probably agree). That film reminded me of Wes Anderson's films, but... not as good.

Morning Musume: Tool of Nationalism?

So I was catching up on my 1930's Japanese history the other day and something struck me: 'Morning Daughters' sounds suspiciously like one of the wartime Patriotic Women's groups that sent their sons and young husbands off to the front for the glory of the Yamato race.

Meeting Jasper Fforde

Last Friday, while I was at Perth city, I saw a sign in Dymocks bookshop telling me that Jasper Fforde's coming for a book signing session on the 22nd of September. Excited, I took a photo of the sign with my mobile phone, as a reminder.

Koda Kumi

Justin: Koda Kumi's gimmick is that she's a slut.

Donald Barthelme - '60 Stories'

Donald Barthelme is not afraid to be stupid. If you're expecting to open this book, read it from start to finish, and for there to be recognizeable characters and epiphanies and 'human dilemmas' and other sorts of things you've come to expect from 'literary fiction', then you're going in with the wrong mindset. No, serious. It's not just nonlinearity. Sometimes Barthelme's writing is retarded. You can see it trying to be funny and failing, or just plain showing off, dropping names. But then, just as you're about to put the book aside, Barthelme will toss off some random, memorable line or image.

Let me give you an example, from the story "The Party" :

DOA: Dead Or Alive is the best video game adaptation since Mortal Kombat

I have long given up hope on video game adaptations. There was a time when I looked forward to every single one of them like any naive video gamer would, begging my long-suffering dad to bring me to the cinemas for such classics like, ah, Super Mario Brothers (we were in Washington then, 1993), Street Fighter (1994, even though I was only 10 then, the film embarrassed the crap out of me, my dad was traumatized) and Double Dragon: The Movie (1994, I got a FREE ACTION FIGURE of Billy Lee from the cinemas! It was the highlight of the entire night, I think it was my dad's too, til this very day, I have it displayed proudly in my room, a badge of honour that I survived the film).

Orange Range

On paper, Orange Range sound like a shit sundae. To demonstrate why this is so, let's gather up the following list of unappetizing musical ingredients

1) Plodding bass-driven alt-metal riffage
2) Rapping
3) Sentimentality
4) A tendency to steal from influences in a way that screams less mashup than 'come on, get some taste.'

and then stir them into a glutinous mixture of Pro Tools-produced sludge. A real unit-shifter, no? Although J-music isn't exactly known for its restraint and ironic detachment, a Japanese Linkin Park is no one's idea of a good time. WTF are you talking about, Justin? you ask. Why not just end the review now?

It gets worse.

CLERKS 2 and some quick thoughts on Kevin Smith's previous films

Get this: My name, yes, MY NAME, is in the credits of Clerks 2. Just sit through the normal credits, wait for the tens and thousands of names listed as 'Mooby's (MYSPACE) Friends' to appear, the names are arranged in alphabetical order (based on the last names), so it does take quite a while until my name (EDMUND YEO, if you're the type who surfs at sites without looking at sidebars) pops up. I didn't really expect that to happen when I saw this with Justin two week ago, in fact, I have already forgotten about this 'Clerks 2 Get In The Credits Contest' on Myspace, so it was a pleasant surprise, just like the movie itself.

SPEED

[On behalf of my little sister, I would like to thank Mossie (the guy has lotsa good anime and film reviews :D), DMJewelle (she makes the anime cosplaying community seem more entertaining than it really is with her incisively-written entries!), Plastic (one of the very first SPEED fans I got to know over the Internet years ago), Cousin Jun Qi (you're my cousin, which means you're cool!), Eeleen The Angel (the beautiful layout of her site is, well, beautiful!), Alynna (one of the rare bloggers I speak regularly to on the MSN :D), Dawnie-poo (er, she's Dawn Yang, do I need to say more?), Athena (a long-time net friend I got to know during my fanfic-writing days), Wingz (for intense Malaysian humour, go to his site), Jayelle (a really nice girl with a soul beautiful like the majestic snowy mountains), Jee (he has lots of things to ponder about), Craig (heh, lots of stuff about underaged Jpop artistes), Bryan (The Undead Dragon!) and Arashi-chan for their warm birthday wishes on the night of her birthday. You guys made my sister's 17th birthday a very memorable one.]

---

Well, after Justin had written so much about Japanese artistes in the past few weeks, I think it's definitely my turn to do so. This time, I shall educate you all, my dear Swiftyholics, about the nearly-forgotten greatness of SPEED, arguably the most influential and successful Japanese girl pop group of their generation (1996-2000).